Cheaper Car Battery Offers – Common Ways People Get Scammed

Cheap car battery? It always sounds great when someone offers a lower price.

But think twice before you accept. It's much like buying a car that should be $80,000 but offered to you at $70,000. There is something you do not yet understand.

If you cannot figure out why yet, do ask friends for advice or call us at 8114 5500 for a chat.

Car Battery Replacement - Learn to Smell A Scam

It pays to know the tricks car battery sellers or mobile services play on you to make a battery for your car look cheap to buy.  When it's cheaper, always ask yourself "why?"

Well, you can be direct, ask them too, but be prepared that it may not be a straight answer. We have come across quite a few in our experience, where the customer is cheated, that we do advise customers to really watch out for what they are getting!

Here are some...

Common Ways Scams That Make A Car Battery Seem Cheaper

1. Poor brand car battery that does not last as long or work as powerfully. Or may even damage your car!

Not all batteries work like #Amaron or #Hoppecke.  And here below are a couple of more dramatic examples. 

How would you like to see a smoke coming from under your car bonnet? And find that it is coming from the car battery?

New-ish Honda Vezel with a smoking battery! (Video recorded by car owner).

Did you know: Car batteries can explode? This owner was likely thinking "$30 more for that better battery", It would not have been too much to spend, compared to inconvenience it can cause and damage that may occur, slightly more is surely worth it.

Plus good batteries last longer - you are not actually spending more for a better battery that lasts longer.

We are not saying it is always the battery that is at fault, sometimes the car is overcharging the battery. But in a fairly new and unmodified car, this is unlikely caused by overcharging.

But I'm sure you would not be surprised to find that different brands perform differently. 

But we always wonder, why our customers call up and only ask about the price!

Less than half will ask, what brand of battery am I getting?

Always ask!

If they answer that the brand is "Go Bad" or "Aiyo", it's time to call another service provider!

This is the first thing you should be sure of when you purchase a car battery - just as a Geely is different from a Toyota, so also battery brands can mean a world of difference in the performance and specifications.

From capacity to Ah to CCA, all these matters. And you know what? The specifications and ratings on a poor brand battery can be overstated on the sticker to look better than it is.

And we are quite sure some brand new batteries do not work as well as their sticker labels tell us they should.

Why? Because, again, brand matters, and because customers do not usually have a professional meter to measure their new battery with, some low-class manufacturers tend to cheat claiming high capacity and CCA.

These poor brands are also the ones that tend to start failing months before other established brands do.

We don't just talk about specifications and power of the battery - some poor brand batteries are so bad they damage your car in subtle ways and sometimes unimaginable ways.

See what happened to this low quality battery below! It exploded inside the car, cracking it's case apart and the acid spilled out to damage the metal parts of the car below the battery.

If you ever encounter this, and I hope you use Fastfix so that you never will, quickly wash away the acid with a copious amount of water from the car engine bay!

But if the battery is in your boot, oh no!

Always choose a good brand battery!

2. Undersized Car Battery

A smaller car battery will always cost less, so if you are paying cheaper, this is one of the things you should look into.

Size refers to the electrical storage capacity of a battery, which is the number of amp hour (Ah) storage that it has.

The more amp hours it has, the longer it can maintain a current before it is discharged and becomes too weak. Example, a 60Ah battery can run 1 amp for 60 hours, or 10 amps for six hours. That is what Ah means.

A DIN100 is a Euro spec 100Ah battery - imagine if the seller gave you one that is 75Ah instead!

25% less than the required capacity and so, wouldn't it be cheaper? Why yes, of course! That's where we will see this because Ah capacity is directly related to how big a battery is:

The unfortunate customer above is owner of a Jaguar, which should be using a 100Ah battery. Note the empty space  which is lacking battery!

How much battery capacity is missing from this poor Jaguar. No wonder he needed to change the battery, it was underperforming and causing issues.

And do you know what? This below is the reading from the above battery that was only about 9 months old. Yes, it is still good, but it had to go, because it was under-powered for the Jaguar that needs a bigger battery.

This lovely blue Jaguar now has the #Hoppecke power it deserves and at the the right AH capacity. Car battery replacement done right!

And this is what the battery looks like, it fills up the space that it is supposed to occupy in the trunk of the Jaguar. Picture is at a different angle but you get the idea.

3. Resell a Used Car Battery As New

This is downright dishonest, and we do not condone re-selling a used battery as new.

Fastfix does resell used batteries we recondition and test, but we always tell our customers this is only recommended as a short term solution for those whose cars are going to reach the end of COE soon.

But here is a good one, you can see more on our Facebook page - an unscrupulous competitor pretending to be the original Fastfix Car Battery Replacement sells an old battery to the wife of this guy, Kel, who approached us to claim on our 1 year warranty on all new batteries we sell.

And of course, we respond to warranty claims - and so we go.

Only to find this battery was not installed by us but by our unscrupulous competitor!

To read more on this intriguing incident, click here.

If you want honest service, and not be afraid your car suffers from poor quality battery or of getting cheated paying cheaper but not getting what you thought you are getting, then call Fastfix at 8114 5500 for your next car battery replacement.

There is only one true Fastfix, the one you can trust!

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